Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Comment: Some pages have notes and highlighting; there are a few pages that have small bends/creases in corners. Covers have light wear and light creasing.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and .

In Karl Marx's early writing (first made available many years after his death) his economic interpretation of history and his concept of communism were set in a comprehensive philosophical framework. Marx's main preoccupation at this time was with man estranged from himself in an alienated world: a subjective, almost religious theme.

Taking full account of these earlier writings, Robert Tucker critiques and reinterprets Marx's thought. He shows how its origins can be located in earlier German philosophers, in particular Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach. Reconstructing the genesis of Marxism in its founder's own mind, he clarifies Marx's mystifying contention that Marxism represented Hegelianism turned 'on its head'. He then presents a new interpretation, based on close textual analysis, of the relation between Marx's early philosophical system and the subsequent materialist conception of history as expounded in the later and best known writings of Marx and Engels. Against this background, Tucker presents Das Kapital as a work belonging to the post-Hegelian mythical development of Germany philosophy. Considering in turn the genesis of Marxism and the underlying continuity of his thought from the early writings to Das Kapital, Tucker shows the theme of alienation is central throughout.

In the years since the book was first written, comments and criticism have encouraged Tucker to change his position somewhat. This is explained in a new introduction that goes beyond the interpretative enterprise of the rest of the book to assess Marx in relation to contemporary concerns: first it presents a critique of Marx's treatment of alienation and then it comments on the moot problem of the continuing relevance of his social and economic thought. On the latter point his views have matured and altered during the intervening years and he now finds the economic and social aspects of Marx's thought considerably more relevant than he did before.

{"currencyCode":"USD","itemData":[{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":29.71,"ASIN":"0765806444","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":8.29,"ASIN":"0872201929","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0}],"shippingId":"0765806444::SpjjTGb4ESzkQunsfw8JkWLECb1AMEbCcj6d0Pmmsp6zKL7gp9ZkYvE0cxctCc%2Bldsm9V4YYkDK%2Fpy9uQCLmtb0eOhQKRZwDKD33Cv8Hlbs%3D,0872201929::QQaajp8GCYPTsiNbuJ1hnBe45dl17Llk%2FJLraBMEr2BBQONZBMmnbAAoNBPzDryn1dxzr0xy4I%2BXbxJwwvPZK1xWDy1WZCw3BhagRtPBOVY%3D","sprites":{"addToWishlist":["wl_one","wl_two","wl_three"],"addToCart":["s_addToCart","s_addBothToCart","s_add3ToCart"],"preorder":["s_preorderThis","s_preorderBoth","s_preorderAll3"]},"shippingDetails":{"xy":"same"},"tags":["x","y","z","w"],"strings":{"addToWishlist":["Add to Wish List","Add both to Wish List","Add all three to Wish List","Add all four to Wish List"],"addToCart":["Add to Cart","Add both to Cart","Add all three to Cart","Add all four to Cart"],"showDetailsDefault":"Show availability and shipping details","shippingError":"An error occurred, please try again","hideDetailsDefault":"Hide availability and shipping details","priceLabel":["Price:","Price for both:","Price for all three:","Price For All Four:"],"preorder":["Pre-order this item","Pre-order both items","Pre-order all three items","Pre-order all four items"]}}

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert C. Tucker is professor emeritus of politics at Princeton University. Among his publications are Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation; The Soviet Political Mind, rev. ed.; The Marxian Revolutionary Idea; Stalin as Revolutionary: A Study in History and Personality, 1879-1929; and Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above 1928-1941.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I have no idea what book John C, Landon is critiquing below, but it is not Philosophy & Myth in Karl Marx. This work by Tucker is astounding. After having read so many works pro and con on Marx and Marxism, this work opens up the vistas of Marx's thought free of either biter hatred, dismissal and diatribes as well as the revisionism and neo-Marxism of fervent true believers out to protect what they have been told Marx says, having never read him fully.

Tucker takes you on a history of the underlying philosophy that influenced Marx from German Ideal Philosophy and Romanticism to of course Hegelianism, but this is no dry read. It is vibrant, exciting and a true page turner. I was sad when the book ended. Whether you are pro or con as far as Marx is concerned, you will come out of reading this book with at least an admiration for the intellectual that he was and a deeper and greater appreciation of the elements that have gone into making the modern and postmodern mind.

If you are a Marxist or lean that way this book will give you a great indepth understanding of Marx that you won't get from any other work and if you are on the right, this book will give you an understanding of so much of progressive thinking that seems incoherent to you. Along the way you will both be surprised as Tucker, in fully reviewing older Marxism, the ideas that Marx actually wrote, also brings out the areas of his thought where he actually agrees with classical liberal/libertarian ideas. This makes neo-Marxists pensive and turn reactionary as they can't have anyone, especially true believers reading that Marx and classical liberals had a lot of things in common. The meta-narrative today is that classical liberalism was fascist, so you cant have it linked to the founder of scientific socialism.

This book is a tour de force not to be missed, no matter what the dry reactionary neo-Marxists think and comment here.

It is an excellent book; it seeks to explain the roots of Marxism, defined as the actual "thought" of Karl Marx rather than "Marxism" in the hands of Lenin and others. Tucker's conclusions are, to say the least, doubtful (do however decide this for yourself), but that doesn't blemish the impressive scope and quality of his scholarship.

One of the strange secrets of Marx is that you can often learn more about him from his critics than from his defenders. Then ironically Marx's critiques, if not his theories which get in the way, often spring to life again. This Transaction reprint is like walking past an old canon on a battlefield and induces one to reopen old battles in one's mind to the point of rubbing salt in old wounds. One thinks of the Prussian official inviting Schelling back to the Universities to 'uproot the dragon seed of Hegelianism'. This approach to Marx critique wishes to uproot the whole of German philosophy starting with Kant (armed with Karen Horney's view on psychoanalysis, it seems) and that's both its weakness and curious eccentric interest. It's instructive to watch someone who has the nerve, almost naivete, to try. Hegel has a few dangerous themes in his work, and this strain entered Marx. Without agreeing, one can consider an 'expose' of a side of Hegel that is factored out of all treatments by his fans. But Kant, Hegel and Marx can't be lumped together in such a cavalier fashion. It seems at points like the book's real villain is Hegel. That approach, way before Fukuyama and his 'end of history' pastiche, would be rejected out of hand now that Hegel is back in the propaganda business, and it has to be admitted the author is perhaps off the mark on every other page. But every _other_ page is curiously apt.The way in which Hegel influenced Marx and Marxists is a philosophical tragedy in itself as teleological thinking and potential violence come into conjuncition. To pin that on Marx and use Hegel for justifying capitalism as 'cunning of reason' is a bit stinkpotish.Read more ›